£30 billion for a phone call - or is it £160 billion?

Anything the sleaze balls in government can do, the private sector can do better. That includes cheating on numbers.

Today, Vodafone grandly announced that it had made £8.8 billion profit, and CNN announced that Vodafone had made a £21.9 billion loss (the colonials have a quiant attachment to the greenback, so they called it $40 billion loss, which sounds even bigger).

The difference in reported profit and loss estimates is a mere £30.7 billion. Given that Vodafone's entire revenues are £29 billion, this is quite a difference. No one is arguing about how much the orally incontinent coughed up for gabbing endlessly on the phone - most of it seems to have come from the Countess herself. But no one can agree whether this was as profitable as peddling cocaine or as efficient as government spending on the NHS.

This particular little argument has been going on for years. Back in 2001 Vodafone was reported as having made either a £7 billion profit or a £10.6 billion loss: that's another £17 billion disappearing down an accounting black hole. Over the last five years, Vodafone has made somewhere between a £40 billion profit and a £120 billion loss.

Woops, there goes £160 billion. Did you see it? No chance.

Of course, the answer is that they are both making a profit and a loss at the same time. They are carefully gouging the Countess every times she picks up her mobile to arrange an urgent smokey bacon frappucino meeting at Starbucks. They are also paying the price for insane acquisitions. Having paid top dollar/pound/euro they are now writing off the value of those investments: that is where the loss comes from.

Having racked up £120 billion of losses by squandering money, we discovered the true value of the acquisitions: a knighthood for the ex-CEO. Government does not understand value or profit or loss, but it does understand big. It always rewards big, in particular the biggest cock-ups. Someone should have told the last CEO that there was no need to spend £120 billion to get a knighthood. Simply slip Anthony Charles Trustme Blair one or two million for a pet project like an Academy, and bingo you get a knighthood for free. Arise Sir Christopher Gent.

Meanwhile, the real mystery is who paid for the £120 billion loss? Step forward the long suffering shareholders who have seen their share price drop by from £3.20 to £1.20. That's smart investment: for every ten pounds you put into Vodafone you can get less £4 back: the other £6 disappears into the pockets of executives and the lucky shareholders of companies which Vodafone has acquired. The only surprise is that such a dismal performance in helping pensioners on their way to poverty was not rewarded with a peerage.

Sleep your way to $150 billion

In a desert of statistical meadow mayonnaise it is, just occasionally, possible to find an odd gem. The Count has been up to his nose in statistical shit but has just found a diamond.

Congratulations go to Professor James Maas of Cornall University who has declared that the cost of sleep deprivation is $150 billion a year. This is a finding to cheer the Count who has long been accused of being an idle waste of space. I can now prove that I am sleeping to keep the economy afloat: it is my patriotic duty to fall asleep at every possible moment.

It gets better. I will not only save the economy by going to sleep. Professor Maas assures me that I will lose weight, reduce the risk of hyper-tension and heart attacks, increase happiness and generally become the sharpest knife in the box.

And if teenagers slept the 9.5 hours they need, they would cease to be a combination of walking zombies and homicidal knife-wielding maniacs. It is hard to stab someone to death while you are asleep instead of getting smashed out of your mind on a $15 all you can drink booze cruise.

Of course, the $150 billion is pure meadow mayonnaise. He got there by multplying the number of hours of lost sleep by the implied lost productivity of workers and produced $150 billion. Who cares if it is bullshit? The difference between bollocks and brilliance has nothing to do with scientific integrity and everything to do with what you want to believe. The Count strongly favours sleep as a solution to all the world's problems.

At this point the Count is off to save the world, not by going into a telephone box and puttting my pants outside my trousers, but by going to bed.

Second class FT -this is urgent

The FT has decided to cheer the Count up, and it has succeeded by proving that incompetence reaches from the heart of government to the heart of the capitalist system (at least, the FT thinks it is the heart of the system: more like the anal passage. The FT is the moral equivalent of the News of the World. Both deal in soap operas: one deals with TV soaps and the other with corporate soaps. The readers of neither paper can do anything about the soap operas other than talk about them with co-workers over the two hour morning and afternoon coffee breaks, plus the three hour lunch before going home again. But the Count digresses).

The FT decided to ask me some impertinent questions, like :

"Do I live in a bungalow". A bungalow?!?!?
How much am I worth? (Ha ha ha: they did not have any "negative net value" box)
Would I like to receive lots of spam from the FT and a few "carefully chosen" (ie paying through the nose) suppliers?

They thoughfully provided me an envelope to post my reply. The envelope was marked "URGENT". The postal frank was for second class post.

I fully expect that they will receive their second class urgent response in the next year or two.

The cost of marriage: £1 million a week

The Count has decided that he is going to marry Sir Paul McCartney. Single sex marriages are all the rage nowadays, but Sir Elton John has already been nabbed. The next best knight for a night is Macca. Of course, first he must ditch the bitch: Heather. The tears (of joy and laughter) fell from the count's face to hear her explain that she is not a gold digger. So I presume we will soon hear that she will leave the marriage with the same assets as she had when it started and will not take the £200 million which Messrs Sue Grabbit and Run and promoting: that is £1 million a week for each week of marriage. Even the Countess does not run the plastic quite that hard. Rest assured, however, that the Count is a gold digger, so he will be very relieved to hear that the £200 million will be left untouched for the Count to nab when he divorces Macca in a couple of years time.

This plan is bound to succeed. I am sure that Macca would like to be upgraded from being a Sir to a Countess (or whatever the single sex version of a Count is). Heather is on her way out. I may have to play for the sympathy vote with Macca. Last time he went for a one legged bird. A legless bird should be an absolute winner. The current countess complains that I am constantly legless as it is, so I should be in with a shout. Unfortunately, the current countess will have to go, taking with her my entire net worth of several mega millions of debt.

Things are looking up.

The cost of £2.3 billion is £30 billion

Actors should never play with animals or children.

Politicians should never play with computers or money. Giving money to politicians is like giving whisky and car keys to a teenager. You know disaster will ensue.

In this case, the politicians have got very excited about computers and health. Hang on to your wallets. The cost of health is damaging to your wealth. Initially, they figured out that buying £2.3 billion of shiny new computers would transform drunken, chain-smoking, idle, fast food guzzling Glaswegians/Geordies/Cocknies/Welsh/Russian Counts (delete as appropriate) into healthy tofu eating joggers. That is as likley as getting a smile from a soviet babushka in a shop.

£2.3 billion was in 2002. Very old fashioned. Now the cost is officially £6.2 billion. And most independent estimates put it at £30 billion. This will get hidden by central government which will swing most of the costs onto local health authorities where no one can see it. So they will then cut the cleaning and nursing budgets (managers have to do something to justify their existence) and then there will be mass outbreaks of food poisoning, legionnaire's deisease and the rest of it becuase the entire NHS is going to be full of managers looking up porn on their £30 billion computer system. Nurses, doctors and cleaners are very last millennium.

This system has the snappy title NPfiT. For £30 billion, at least they could have thought up a decent name for it.

The cretins behind this are Accenture, who are qualified for this because they are also behind the cock ups at the DWP. They used to advertise "Technology, Outsourcing, Consulting and Innovation". After a while, they dropped innovation when it was pointed out to them that they were as innovative as a donkey's turd. Now they advertise "Performance. Delivered". Perhaps they should be more accurate and advertise "Crappy performance. Delivered Late. And at ten times the original estimate".

Give me a break

This is the time of year when the Count starts rummaging through the attic in search of last year's sandals, shorts, knotted handkerchief and bucket and spade. In short (or shorts) it is time to think of having a break.

So the Count was delighted to see that lastminute.com was advertising breaks in Paris for a mere £83.

Never let it be said that government are the only scumbags on the planet. Lastminute and all the other tour operators can join them in the gutter. Their "cost of" calculations should carry a wealth warning. Especially when they say the cost is "from....."

After much digging, the best price the Count could actually get for a three start hotel somewhere in Paris (as opposed to a hovel in a cabbage patch surrounded by rioting immigrants 100km from Paris) was a mere £740. To which they doubtless add every surcharge and optional extra they can think of: booking fee, credit card fee, delivery fee, upgrade fee, administation fee, insurance etc. So the actual cost of Paris is ten times the cost they advertise. And that is before the countess has done her best to turn around the French perma-recession by going in for serious plastic abuse at all the boutiques and restaurants in the capital.

Searching for the elusive £83 deal is like looking for hen's teeth. Possibly the only £83 tour involves being given a pogo stick at Dover and being invited to pogo stick your way across the channel to Paris. Of course, there is also a non-refundable deposit of £2,000 on the pogo stick. But the good news is that for a modest upgrade they will provide a mad fenchman with a bicycle, baguette and foaming rottweiller to chase you all the way to Paris. Or perhaps they provide a rottweiller on a bike and a foaming frenchman. Whatever.

Of course, the bullshit is given away by the weasal word "from". "from" brings on involuntary spasms from the count, whenever he sees it being used in advertising:
"Spain from only.."
"Bargain computers from..."
"Apartments from..."

If any one sees any particularly egregious (don't know how to spell that word or what it means, but it sounds pretty good to me) uses of the word "from" let the count know: your fame will be assured in this massive column. And the curse of the count will fall upon the villains.

£45 billion of bollocks

The Count is back after and enforced absence. I was herding reindeer in the Arctic with some of my peasants. This was, conceivably, an attempt by the Countess to gain full control over my Siberian empire. Sleeping under the stars sounds very wonderful, except when it is my 20 centigrade and hypothermia is setting in. Luckily, I could count on my loyal retainers to run off with the bloody reindeer and leave me stranded.

There are some people who think this is all fantasy. Ha. For you doubters, the Count is going hi-ttech and adding an image of my overnight arrangements with my peasants. I will also add a picture of the bloody reindeer. And one of most faithful retainer: Nesta the dog.

In between chasing reindeer round the Arctic the Count was also obliged to write a book. Well, two books having fooled two publishers into thinking I had something worth saying. The were fooled and then I found I was the fool who had to write the bloody things.

So this has not given the Count the time to Count the Cost of Folly. With Blair and Brown arguing over who can sink the ship best and fastest, there is no shortage of folly ot count. But no sooner does the Count resurface from the Arctic, (chased by kid Cameron showing off his green (or greenhouse killing) creds by helping destroy the arctic ice cap with his trip to the Arctic) than the Count is confronted by one Professor Bone

Professor Bonehead professes that the UK Universities are worth £45 billion to the UK. Let it never be said that he may lack a teeny weeny bit of impartiality as he is President of Universities UK.

So how has Professor Dickhead done his professorial calculation? He has observed that the income of the Universities is £16.9 billion: he then multiplies that by 2.5 because he wants a big and impressive number and then concludes that the universities are worth £45 billion a year to the UK.

Pure meadow mayonnaise. Bonebrain is using the same calculation that the Countess uses when confronted with her latest and greatest credit card statement. They confuse cost and value. If the universities cost the long suffering taxpayer £16.9 billion, that does not make them worth £16.9 billion. They are probably causing huge damage to the UK by churning out illiterate dumbshits who expect to be vastly paid for minimal work just because they have a BA (hons) in media studies from Hull. And as for multiplying the cost by 2.5.... Brown and Blair may as well say that the government is worth £1,300 billion a year to the UK (even although that is greater than the GDP of the UK): first, take taxation at £550 billion and then multiply it by professor Bonehead's multiplier and suddenly you have the value of all the paper shufflers in Whitehall.

Its enough to make the Count want to go back to reindeer herding...